


Unbetrothed

by ariel2me



Series: Inspired by Fire & Blood [13]
Category: A Song of Ice and Fire & Related Fandoms, A Song of Ice and Fire - George R. R. Martin
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-08-11
Updated: 2019-08-11
Packaged: 2020-08-18 19:49:38
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,668
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20197174
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ariel2me/pseuds/ariel2me
Summary: Lady Elissa had been twice betrothed, once at twelve and once at sixteen, but she had frightened off both boys, as her own father admitted ruefully. (Fire & Blood)The two broken betrothals of Lady Elissa.Or, how Elissa Farman frightened off her betrothed, not once but twice.





	Unbetrothed

This one could not be frightened off and sent away as easily as the first one, Elissa saw at once. Her first intended husband had been the same age as _she_ was at the time, a callow boy of twelve whose tremulous voice had not quite finished breaking, a tiresome creature who kept talking about his mother and would not stop repeating his mother’s instructions on how a gentle, meek and properwife should behave and was required to treat her lord husband.

For someone so young, Marlin Prester already had very definite notions about what was _owed_ to him by his wife, should he ever become a husband. Nay, a _lord_ husband, not just a husband. Marlin never missed a chance to emphasize the _lord_ in the phrase lord husband. _When I am your lord husband_ – that was how he would start every other sentence he spoke to his betrothed. Unsurprisingly, Elissa loathed and despised him almost from the start. The thought of being married to _this_ boy was completely unfathomable and unacceptable to her, even if at the time, she had not yet realized that the thought of being married to _any_ man was just as unfathomable and unacceptable to her. 

Elissa took him sailing, just the once, and as she told her grandfather, her father and her mother later, it was_ not_ her fault that the dry, breezeless and sunny day had suddenly turned into a wet, windy and stormy one. Her betrothed threw up copiously all over himself, and all over Elissa. He might have pissed in his breeches too, though that was harder to tell, since he was drenched from head-to-toe because of the rain, just like Elissa herself. 

Unlike Elissa, who had savored the taste of rainwater on her skin and her tongue, dancing gleefully as the sails danced in concert with the wind, Marlin was not pleased, not pleased at all. He fled from the ship in tears, calling out for “my dearest Mama, who would never have been as cold and as heartless as _you_ have been during my moment of distress.” 

“_The Wind Our Steed – _those are our House words, Grandfather. The Farmans of Fair Isle have been exploring the western seas since the Dawn Age. Do you really wish your granddaughter to be wed to a scared little boy who cried out for his mother because the wind was blowing too swiftly for his liking?” asked Elissa, pointedly.

Her grandfather was furious, despite her parents’ attempt to placate him. “That boy doesn’t want you now. He is _terrified_ of you. He calls you a little monster. He would rather _die_ than marry you, he tells his mother, and his mother the coddler _certainly_ does not want you as her good-daughter now. _‘A man deserves respect from his lady wife,’_ she keeps telling me, as if I do not know that.”

“A man should _earn_ respect from his lady wife,” Elissa would have replied, but her mother pulled her away from her grandfather’s solar before she could open her mouth again. 

Once they were in the privacy of Elissa’s bedchamber, her mother said, “You may have been able to fool your father and your grandfather about not knowing that it’s going to be a stormy day, but you cannot fool _me, _Elissa. You have been studying the patterns of the sea and the sky since you were a little girl still clinging to my gown. You _knew _full well when you took that poor boy sailing this morning that a storm was coming.”

Elissa could never tell a believable lie to her mother. Lady Astrid was too astute and too canny to fall for that, and she merely had to raise her eyebrows very, very slightly to let her children know that they had been found out.

“Yes, I knew,” Elissa admitted. “I knew that a storm was coming, and I took him sailing on purpose. I wanted to test him, and he failed my test.”

“Would _any_ man have passed your test?” her mother asked, shrewdly, too shrewdly for Elissa’s liking. She avoided her mother’s gaze. 

And now, years later, she was betrothed again. At five-and-ten, this one was actually a year younger than Elissa, but he seemed to be made of sterner stuff than the first one. Or perhaps that gleam of determination she spied in his eyes was more about his unwillingness to let go of such a grand matrimonial prize, because in the four years since she had successfully driven away her first betrothed, Elissa’s position in life had changed, and changed quite considerably.

Four years ago, she was merely the daughter to the _second_ son of the Lord of Fair Isle, but now, after the death of her grandfather and her uncle, she was the daughter of the Lord of Fair Isle himself. 

Just like the first time, Elissa knew that it had to be her betrothed who made the decision to break their betrothal. That was her way out, her _only _way out. Even her father, as indulgent and too-lenient as he was often accused to be when it came to his children, would not have allowed Elissa to be the one to break the betrothal. Even the amiable and good-natured Marq Farman had his limits. 

Elissa took this one sailing as well, but neither the storm nor the sharp lashings of her tongue managed to frighten Lyle Lydden off. Other tried and true methods also failed, dismally. In fact, she had almost despaired of finding a way to convince him to break their betrothal, until the day she saw Lyle staring intently and meaningfully at one of her father’s squires. And remarkably, his gaze seemed to be warmly reciprocated by the squire himself. There was some kind of familiarity between these two young men, Elissa suspected.

“Let’s speak honestly, for once. Neither of us wants this wedding,” she declared, bluntly, the next time she and Lyle were alone. 

“I pray that you would not presume to speak on my behalf, Lady Elissa,” her betrothed replied, in his tone of unfailing courtesy and chivalry that frustrated Elissa considerably. Even when she berated him aboard the ship for being such a poor sailor, he had merely replied, “We can’t all be good at the same things, my lady,” while displaying his serene and patient smile.

_Are you human, or are you made of stone? Or made of sugar, spice and everything nice? _Elissa had bitterly wondered at the time, her own patience tested to the limit.

Brusquely, she remarked, “I saw the way your eyes could not leave that squire’s face. His name is Paddy, by the way, and he is sixteen years of age, just like me. Or do you know that already?”

Her betrothed blushed red, as red as a pomegranate. Elissa knew then that she had been right in her suspicion after all. 

“Given that we are speaking honestly, would this marriage not be a … a convenience … shall we say, for the both of us, my lady?” questioned her betrothed, after he had recovered from the shock. 

Elissa frowned. “For _both _of us? I have no idea what you mean.”

“You have seen much and more about my own affairs, I admit, but I have also seen how your own eyes would often linger on the face of Faircastle’s mysterious visitor, whose name is never to be spoken of out loud. ”

Princess Rhaena. He was talking about Princess Rhaena. Elissa’s heart was beating furiously. Slowly, and as calmly as she could manage, she replied, “I am only showing my respect and my admiration towards someone who has lost so much and has been denied her rightful position in life, but has not allowed all that pain and suffering to diminish her. That is it. That is the beginning and the end of it. Nothing more, and nothing less.”

The look Lyle Lydden gave Elissa was almost as shrewd and as knowing as the one her mother had all too often given her over the years. This would not do. This would not do at all. She needed to regain the upper hand, quickly. 

“Do you _really_ want a marriage of convenience?” she demanded of her betrothed. 

Lyle sighed. “No,” he finally replied, after a long, long pause. “I do not wish to wed at all. My dream is to serve with a brotherhood of knights for the rest of my natural life. To be a sworn brother of the Kingsguard is my ultimate dream, of course, but with King Maegor on the throne –“

“Maegor the Usurper will not be sitting on that throne forever.”

“But what excuse could I conceive, my lady, to break our betrothal?”

“Tell them that I frightened you off, like I did to that other boy, the one to whom I was betrothed for less than a moon’s turn. Tell them that I was so horrible that I managed to turn you off the idea of marrying_ any_ woman at all, for some time to come. Tell them that you will need time to recover. I have a shocking reputation, you see, and that could be useful, for both of us.” She acted out his part, expressively reciting the line, “One day, my broken heart will finally heal and mend, and only then could I find it in myself to wed, and to love again.”

Lyle laughed with abandon, a full-throated laugh that was so far removed from his customary courteous and chivalric manner towards Elissa. She watched him with a puzzled but growing smile on her face. She had never seen this side of Lyle Lydden before. This was a man she could see herself growing fond of, as a friend, even if she still had no intention whatsoever to be married to him. 

“This would not be appropriate in public,” Elissa reminded him. “We must appear like we have been arguing the whole time. We must not look like we are parting on good terms.”


End file.
